The multimedia playing system made with the integration of a computer system and an audiovisual player is gaining popularity and is widely used on many occasions, including offices and households, because of the rapid development of computer technology. Similarly, computers integrated with intelligent appliances (IA) are also widely available in the consumer market.
Conventional multimedia playing systems are basically interfacing a computer system with an audiovisual player. The user usually needs to boot up the computer system first before he or she activates and operates the audiovisual player. In other words, the user must wait until the computer system completes the BIOS program initialization, POST program, peripheral detection and driving, OS activation, system state setting, and so on, before the user can execute the audiovisual program to play the audiovisual data.
To speed up the booting process, conventionally, a second operating system is installed in a second region of a hard disk of the computer to provide the multimedia playing or intelligent appliance functions.
However, although the aforementioned method provides the user with the choice of normal computer booting process or executing multimedia playing function, the computer still needs to read the operating system, drivers, application programs and the data when the computer is booted. The speed and efficiency of the computer system is still limited by the access speed of the hard disk.
Since hardware design of a computer-based multimedia system is different from a household appliance, the time required for booting the computer-based multimedia system is usually much longer than that of a household appliance. With this type of design, the user usually needs to boot the computer system up in order to activate and operate the audiovisual player. In other words, the user must wait until the computer system completes the BIOS program initialization, POST program, peripheral detection and driving, OS activation, system state setting, and so on, before the user can execute the audiovisual program to play the audiovisual data. It is inconvenient for the user as there is no shortcut to bypass the tedious booting process of the computer system.
Furthermore, when the user operates the function option button to activate multimedia playing, the computer must access the hard disk for multimedia application program and execute the program. When the user shuts down and re-activates the multimedia playing function, the computer still requires to access the hard disk for multimedia application program and executes the program. The execution remains the same for both executions, and the use of computer resources remains the same as well.